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A new survey conducted by HCL found that many global enterprises are running multiple instances of SAP software. By consolidating to a single instance, firms could reduce costs up to 25 percent.

ZDNet's Toby Wolpe reported, "On average, big companies worldwide are running five SAP instances, while almost four in 10 have more than six, according to a study from IT services firm HCL Technologies. The cost of running SAP averages out at $1,518 per user per year, which could be cut by up to 25 percent by moving to single instance."

Zee News added, "Large enterprises can save as much as USD 30 billion globally by consolidating their instances of SAP, a study by HCL technologies said."

InformationWeek's Doug Henschen explained, "In many cases separate instances are set up to run different regions, such as North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. But in all too many cases, mergers, acquisitions and business fiefdoms add to a jumble of instances and even multiple versions of software. 'The SAP installed based is more complex and more fragmented than we expected,' said Steve Cardell, president of HCL's Enterprise Application Services practice, in an interview with InformationWeek. 'In some cases customers are running four different instances on four different release versions with one having five modules and the other eight, but they're not the same modules.'"

ComputerWeekly also quoted Cardell, who said, "There are clearly very substantial political and operational hurdles that can stand in the way of companies achieving a single instance, so we are now seeing large companies either making top-down decisions to drive through such changes, or deciding it is the wrong battle to fight so instead are looking to improve integration between systems."